


igni ferroque

by mikkal



Series: junk in my trunk (and my documents folder) [6]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 12:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12081120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkal/pseuds/mikkal
Summary: -with fire and ironIn which Treville is fully aware of every one of his Musketeers' skill sets, just as much as he's aware they are nothisMusketeers, and never really were. They are the King's soldiers, and they are for the King to use as he pleases.Now, with France on the brink of war with her cousin Spain, he had made his choice. Aramis will just be the one who suffers for it.a permanently incomplete musketeers AU





	igni ferroque

  
igitur qui desiderat pacem,  
praeparet bellum

* * *

  
Dreams. Good dreams. A breeze. Flowers in an open field. The soft scent of a woman. The distant laughter of a child. Bright. Happy.

\- interrupted with a harsh hand and a sharp word. Yet with gentle care as an off-balancing counterpoint.

Aramis awakens with a startled swing - as is common - and Athos catches his fist with ease - also as is common. The newly appointed Captain's face bears a grim expression, guilt and remorse hanging heavy over his person. He looks tired, shoulders slumped, free hand on the pommel of his rapier.

He groans, dragging a hand over his face, doing his best to chase the remnants of sleep from his eyes.

“Time?” he croaks out, though he’s sure he already knows the answer.

Athos eyes him carefully, the drops his hand to step away to the window. “The gloaming,” he answers briefly. Aramis feels the distance intimately, his heart pounding in his chest, a sweat breaking out on his hands. He’s shaken like he’s never been before. “Treville will be here soon,” he adds.

He takes a breath, calming himself. His duty to the Queen and Crown - and the King, if he were so willing. As he is treasonly not most days - is what keeps him from bolting from the room and back on his path to Douai and God. He made a choice, and now his mistakes have so rudely ripped the chance away from him.

“Are you ready?”

Aramis glances up, a bitter smile twisting his lips. “I would say I am,” he replies carefully, “if it were any other time. This time -,” he breathes a stuttering breath and clenches his trousers in his fists to hide the tremble. “This time, mon ami, I am not.”

The words come from him unwanted. Spilling from his lips like a bucket with a leak. No matter how hard he tries to keep his fears and doubts (and terror. terror) to himself, the look on Athos’ face has him breaking the dam.

Athos doesn’t want to hear about this, he’s sure. How many times has he taken it upon himself to scold Aramis for his misdeeds, for his treason? How many times has the older man turned away from him so no one can see his glare? Athos does not feel sorry for him, nor does that guilt and remorse mean anything towards him. It cannot.

Yet, a hand touches his shoulder and another cups the back of his neck. He jerks his chin to come face to face with his brother. Aramis watches him, wide-eyed, as he leans down and presses a kiss to his forehead, lingering there with slow, silent breaths. Aramis lets his own eyes close, leaning into the touch.

“I am sorry, brother,” Athos whispers to his skin. “If there were another way, I would suggest it. But the King will not change his mind no matter who plead to him.”

“I am off to Douai then,” Aramis murmurs, bringing a hand to wrap around Athos’ wrist. “Tomorrow.” He swallows. “Yesterday,” he amends. “With blood on my hands and over my heart. This is what the King wants, then this is what God wants. Who am I to deny them this punishment they’ve seen so fit?.”

Athos says nothing to that - because he knows, he knows that this is a punishment. Not even the Queen can charm her husband into another thought. Not even her plead for the Dauphin’s sake can change his mind.

A punishment so fitting. He committed treason, and even if those charges were dropped they still hang above him as a truth unsaid, unwitnessed.

Athos breathes sharply through his nose before pulling back, but never taking his hand from the grounding point on Aramis’ neck.

“So you do,” he says roughly, the lie heavy in the quiet room.

They don’t move as the heavy boots stomp up the stairs. Only when there’s a series of soft rapping on the door in a predetermined pattern do they relax, Aramis sagging and Athos sighing.

Treville enters, sliding off his hat as he closes the door behind him with a click. He eyes the two Musketeers with a stern eye. Aramis looks away first, shame keeping him quiet. Fear is there too, a vice around his throat in a choking grip.

The Minister’s eyes flicker towards the fire roaring on the wall, then back at Aramis. “Gentlemen,” he says, voice low. “Shall we get this over with?”

Aramis swallows thickly and nods. “Nothing like the present,” he decides grandly with none of the enthusiasm he pretends to feel. “We delay this any longer and I might find myself with a noose around my neck instead.”

Though that’s still an option in the future, he reminds himself.

Athos’ hand on his neck squeezes in warning, a chastisement against his words, then falls away. Leaving him cold.

They speak no words as Aramis pulls off his shirt and lays himself upon the wooden table in front of that fire. Athos offers a leather strap for him to bite down on and he levers himself on the table as well, bracketing Aramis’ legs to sit on his thighs, hands pressing down just below the man’s elbows against the harsh grain of the wood.

Treville reaches to the fire and pulls the iron rod from the flames. He holds it aloft, inadvertently letting it linger in Aramis’ sight. Aramis holds his own for a moment, bravery a fleeting thing along his nerves.

But then the panic sets in and he tenses, tendons cording tight as his eyes widen and his head slams back against the table. He does not fight his friend. He does not fight his fate. He simply pushes himself against the wood, cowering as cowards do.

“Shush, my brother,” Athos whispers. “Be still. Be calm. It will be over quickly.”

“Hold fast, Aramis,” Treville says.

And then he’s pressing the end of the iron against his skin just under his collarbone on his left.

Aramis’ teeth clench tight around the leather in his mouth. He writhes as the hot brand sears. Tears leak from his eyes, a scream tears from his throat as muffled as it is. His nerves are white hot coals racing up and down his chest, his left arm numb.

He never loses himself into blessed unconsciousness in that long moment of pain. His vision darkens around the corners, his feels himself swoop into another plain however briefly, but he’s aware of Athos still over him, whispering in the little Latin he still remembers - the Latin he picked up from Aramis over the years. He’s aware of the pressure of the brand fading, though the pain spikes and increases, and Treville’s hand falls over his forehead.

He catches sight of grief and sorrow on Athos’ face and then cold, slick darkness finally welcomes him into her embrace.

* * *

Athos sits back, sweat sliding down the back of his neck. He does his best to keep his weight off Aramis though he knows he can’t cause further injury to his chest from jostling his legs. It seems...wrong to touch the marksman with him so limp and oblivious in unconsciousness.

Upon his skin, blistering and raised, raw and oozing blood, sits a perfect brand of a fleur-de-lis. The mark of a criminal.

His stomach turns over at the sight and he has to look away, awkwardly climbing down from his perch. Treville waits for him with a hand outstretched, a sodden cloth in his grip. Allowing this moment, part of a small few to come, between brothers.

Athos takes it wordlessly and places it on Aramis’ forehead. Even now sweat lines his brown, his breath shallow and stuttered. All in pain - the future holding possible infections he doesn’t want to imagine. They cannot treat the brand, they cannot curb his pain wholly. They can’t do anything other than bring a small amount of comfort to the man who willingly let himself be brand traitor to his King and country for the sake of safety for that aforementioned King and country.

(let himself be brand traitor to aid his Queen, Athos reminds himself, and his son. He holds no true love for the King, only loyalty.)

Treville clasps a hand over his shoulder, drawing his attention. The grip is tight, his expression pinched and ladened heavy with grief. “Will you be able to let him go, Athos?”

He takes a moment of truth to shake his head. “None of us will be able to,” he answers, laying his hand flat over Aramis’ forehead. The furrow carving deep between his brother’s brows eases at the touch. “If Porthos and d'Artagnan can’t bare to let him leave, how do you think I feel - knowing the truth?”

* * *

  
damnatio ad leons et bestias

* * *

  
“Renato! Renato! Come. Show us your prowess with a gun you so expertly claim to have.”  
  
He pauses mid-brush of the mount before him, something akin to unease trickling down his spine. A captain sits on a hay bale, a pistol in one grip as he eyes the stable-hand with a curious gleam. Cristobal waves at him from his spot to the man’s left. He swears under his breath. He knew - knew - being kind and subservient to the rather-high-ranking soldier would get him this attention, he had just been hoping it wouldn’t be so soon.

* * *

“And what is this?” Captain Sebastian de Figueroa rakes the tip of his sword across his chest, pulling aside the collar of his shirt to reveal the raised and ugly brand of a fleur-de-lis. “You are a criminal, good sir.”  
  
Renato scowls and wills himself not to bat the sword away, keeping his head dipped. “Only in the eyes of the French, senor.” He clears his throat. “Pardon, Capitan.” There is no blade against his throat or slapping against his legs. “I was born in a border village, went to Paris to make something of myself.” He lets his deep-rooted, well-festered disgust rise to his voice. “There I learned that it doesn’t matter if I was born on French soil, I am Spanish by looks and enough blood to decide that I am nothing but less than the dirt on their boots. Their King is no King of mine.” He risks the glance up.

De Figueroa looks pleased, he even takes a step back and flips his pistol so the butt is outstretched to Renato.

“Where would you have learned to shoot?”  
Renato takes the pistol carefully, testing the weight with barely a twitch of his limbs. “My farm,” he says softly, keeping his chin low. “Predators and bandits thought they could make my father’s lands their resting grounds. I convinced them otherwise.”

* * *

  
omnia cum deo

* * *

  
“Re-Renato. Mi nom -.”  
  
She leans her head back against the crumbling wall, crushing her curls without much mind to them. There’s no one here but the two of them, but she can’t bare to move now - not with him whispering and whispering.

“Mi n-nombre es…”

She has seen many sides of the men her husband calls brothers, but she can’t quite remember if this is one of them in her memory. Broken as such, whispering quiet words to no-one there as chains clink, clink in the echoing silence.

“...es Re-Renato. No se…”

She needs to move. She has a task, a mission, to accomplish. The first message had been from a month ago and, if her information is correct, a month to a day less is how long this man has been strung up like a kill after a jovial hunt. He has no more time to give chained up. And she has no more time to rush standing here.

“No s-se que -.”

She rolls around the corner, shoulder pressing against the stone as she moves. The sight that greets her has her pausing for a heart-stopping moment, eyes widening and her breath catching in her chest. She hadn’t - She hadn’t been expecting this. She -

“- qui-quieres de m-mi.”

“Oh, Aramis,” Milady de Winter - name now and not forever hers - breathes out, her skirts whispering as she steps closer to the bars separating her from the Lost Inseparable.

Blood drips from his mouth. Eyes glassy and unfocused as they gaze upon her. “Mi nom -,” his voice fails him then - if the rasping death rattle spilling from his lips could be considered a voice - but he goes on to mouth the words (- bre es Renato. No se que quieres de mi.).

* * *

  
“Captain!”  
  
Athos glances up from his maps, a scowl firm in his expression that lessens only slightly when he sees Porthos behind the sentry that has decided to abandon his post. He sets his scribe down with a click and straightens up. d'Artagnan, at his side, blinks blearily at the sudden noise, looking curiously from the writing utensils sitting on the table to back at his captain, then over to their arriving company. Athos smothers the grin before it can even twitch at the corner of his lip, trapped under tongue and behind teeth

It’s then he notices the Musketeer blue behind Porthos. A young man, forget-me-not blue tied around his throat in the sign of an unofficial messenger from Treville.

“What’s this?” he asks, stepping around the table before anyone can get too close. The sound of papers rustling and rolling tell him d’Artagnan is clearing away any notes that might be too sensitive for certain eyes. “Why aren’t you at your post, solider?”

The sentry flushes, fumbling a bit before he finds himself. “I’d thought,” he clears his throat awkwardly, “I’d thought I’d escort the messenger to you, captain. I ain’t never seen him before and I -.” Porthos’ hand heavy on his shoulder cuts him off.

“The lad ran into me,” he says, a light in his eyes dancing merrily. “Not too far from ‘ere. ‘tis my fault, Athos.”

Athos nods, dipping his chin sharply. “Your cautious is noted,” he says. “And well-founded in most cases - except this one. Return to your post and do not leave this time.”

The soldier - Pierre - snaps an impressively smart salute. “Yessir.” And dashes off, tripping slightly over a mound of dirt.

 


End file.
